Review #42: India A to Z

Review #42: India A to Z

How do you sum up India in a single volume? Is it even possible? Veena Seshadri and Vidya Mani take up the challenge in a volume called India A to Z: An Alphabetical Tour of Incredible India, a “bumper infopedia… packed with fascinating facts, terrific trivia and colourful cartoons on just about everything in India”.

It attempts to break India down into digestible alphabetical chunks. So, if you wanted to know whether dinosaurs ever lived here, turn to ‘R for Rajasaurus’; if you were after the story of the first ever airmail sent (which happened in India, incidentally), go to ‘P for Post’; the Koh-i-Noor controversy is alluded to in K; for a monthly festival round-up, head to F; or perhaps you’d like to look up desi Nobel Laureates, under N, of course. Well, you get the drift — the book basically takes you on an alphabetical journey of India.